for us with lovely ladies and gallant courtiers; outside, from her windows looking into the Park, fair Nelly greets the King with mirthful eyes and saucy tongue as he crosses from Whitehall. Well, Miss Brett was perhaps quite as beautiful as Nelly or Louise, but we do not in the least desire to read about her. The book of the French courtier treats entirely of the world, the flesh, and the devil--we read it with rapture; the Chronicles of St. James’s might be written so as to treat of exactly the same subjects--yet we turn from them. Why? Because it is impossible to throw over the Georges the luminous halo of romance. George the First, the Second, and the son of the Second, were perhaps as immoral as Charles and James; yet between them all they could not produce a single romance. The first romantic episode in the history of the house of Hanover is that simple little legend of Hannah Lightfoot. Perhaps another reason why St. James’s has never become to the imagination a successor to Whitehall and Westminster is that from the year 1714 to the year 1837 the old kind of loyalty to the sovereign no longer existed. Compare the personal loyalty displayed to Henry V., to Henry VIII., to Elizabeth, with that felt for William III., who saved the country from Catholic rule, and for George I., who carried on the Protestant succession. The country accepted these kings, not because they had any personal love for them, but because they enabled the nation to have what it wanted. The new kings did not try to become personally popular; but they were ready to lead the people in war for religious freedom, and they represented a principle. But as for personal loyalty of the ancient kind, that no longer existed. For exactly a similar reason Kensington has never been a palace in which the world is interested. William III. chose the house for his residence; he died here. An excellent king, a most useful king, but hardly possessed of the nation’s love. George II. died here; the Duke of Sussex died here; yet there is no curiosity or enthusiasm about the place. With Whitehall the case is quite different. It was the Palace of Henry VIII., of Elizabeth, of the Tudors and the Stuarts; the Palace of sovereigns who ruled as well as reigned, who were English and not Germans, who lived in the open light and air for all to behold; if they did not hide their vices, they openly displayed their virtues: there is more interest attaching to the Whitehall of Charles II. alone than there is to the St. James’s of all those who came after him. Since, then, we can here consider one palace only out of the remaining four, let us turn to the Palace of Whitehall. We have seen that, of all the buildings which once clustered round the Painted Chamber and formed the [Illustration: _Inigo Jones 1614._]